Mauritius Harel Freres swings back into black

Mauritius' sugar producer Harel Freres Ltd. swung to a pretax profit of 900,000 Mauritius rupees ($31,915) in the first half from a pretax loss of 70.2 million rupees a year ago, buoyed by its energy unit, the firm said on Friday.

Some 20 percent of the Indian Ocean island's power is generated from burning bagasse, the waste generated when crushing sugar cane, giving it one of the world's highest ratios of renewable energy.

Harel Freres said pretax profit from energy production activities rose to 99 million rupees in the six months to June 30 from 52.5 million a year earlier.

However, its sugar cluster posted a pretax loss of 216.3 million rupees against a loss of 222.3 million in the same period in 2010. The firm said this loss could be mitigated by a higher estimated sugar price for the 2011 crop.

The Mauritius Sugar Syndicate has said producers will be paid 15,000 rupees per tonne of sugar this year as the Indian Ocean island shifts to exporting refined sugar. Last year the rate was 13,535 rupees.

"We would expect overall performance for 2011 to be better than last year. The profitability of our energy and commercial activities should improve, while losses suffered to date by our sugar activity will be substantially reduced during the crop season," the company said.

Harel Freres said earnings per share fell to 0.32 rupees from 0.54 rupees, while revenue rose to almost 1.39 billion rupees from 1.2 billion.